The letter “J” was the last added to the English alphabet. The English alphabet, a communication stable for centuries, has a fascinating secret: its youngest member is the letter ‘j’. This linguistic curiosity highlights the dynamic nature of language, where even the most fundamental elements can change over time.
The History of Our Modern Alphabet
How did we get from the Latin alphabet to the runic alphabet? What made people abandon their traditional writing system in favor of a new system? This is an interesting story, and we must look at the history behind the Latin alphabet to understand it.
Phoenician Alphabet
Around the 13th century or 12th century, the journey of the modern English alphabet began. A group known as the Phoenicians possessed a large empire and extensive trade network during this period. Their alphabet was brought along as their empire grew.
Through prolonged contact, this alphabet was passed to the Greek civilization. The Phoenician alphabet was eventually adopted and developed into the ancient and modern Greek alphabet.
The Greek civilization was home to many colonies along the Mediterranean coast at the time. Magna Graecia was one of the colonies. It was found on the Italian peninsula.
The Italian peninsula was once a bustling place before the glory days of the Roman Empire. Magna Graecia was located in the south. This area was home to many Greek settlers.
The Etruscans occupied the western half of the peninsula. The Etruscans adopted from Magna Graecia, the Greek alphabet, after a long period of contact. This was the next step on the path to the current alphabet that we use today.
Roman Alphabet
Roman society and culture were greatly influenced by the Etruscans. Some Etruscans are even said to have been Roman kings. It was only natural that Romans would adopt the Etruscan alphabet because of their close social contact. It happened as early as 600 BCE.
The Duenos Inscription (6th century BCE) is one of the earliest known pieces of Latin writing. These 21 letters made up the Latin alphabet.
This is a short list of the 26 letters we currently have. Noticeably, the letters “J”, U”, “W”, Y”, and Z are missing. These letters were added later and, as the article will demonstrate, the letter J was added last in the 16th century AD.
When was J added to the alphabet?
J is a bit of a late bloomer; after all, it was the last letter added to the alphabet. It is no coincidence that I and J stand side by side—they actually started out as the same character. The letter J began as a swash, a typographical embellishment for the already existing I. With the introduction of lowercase letters to the Roman numeric system, J was commonly used to denote the conclusion of a series of ones—as in “xiij” for the number 13.
(A story for another day: the name of the dot over the “j” and “i,” and why we use them.)
Are J and I related?
J’s phonetic quest for independence probably began with the sound of the letter I. Originally a Phoenician pictogram representing a leg with a hand, and denoting a sound similar to the Y in “yes,” I was later adopted by Semitic groups to describe the word “arm” which, in Semitic languages, began with a J (also possessing the same Y sound as in “yes”).
How did J get its sound?
Both I and J were used interchangeably by scribes to express the sound of both the vowel and the consonant. It wasn’t until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds. Trissino’s contribution is important because once he distinguished the soft J sound, as in “jam” (probably a loan sound), he was able to identify the Greek “Iesus” a translation of the Hebrew “Yeshua,” as the Modern English “Jesus.” Thus the current phoneme for J was born. It always goes back to Jesus.
The English language is infamous for matching similar phonemes with different letters and J is certainly no exception. In addition to the aforementioned soft J sound, as in “jam,” which is phonetically identical to the soft G as in “general,” the J in Taj Mahal takes on a slight variation of that same sound and is probably the closest to Trissino’s original phonetic interpretation. And, coming full circle, the J sound you hear in the word “hallelujah” is pronounced “hallelujah.”
The Journey Of The Letter “J”
Everyone knows that “Z”, the last letter in the alphabet is important. But did you know that it wasn’t? Although it is located in the first half of the ABCs, “J”, which was 26th among the current set of letters, is a latecomer.
Gian GiorgioTrissino added “J” to the alphabet. He was a Renaissance poet and dramatist as well as a grammarian. In that capacity, he began to mess with the alphabet.
The Roman alphabet shows that “J” is not a separate letter. It was simply a different way of writing the letter “I”. It was most commonly found in Roman numerals that concluded with a series or “I”. This was because the last “I” in the sequence was written as “J”. If used as a letter instead of a number, “J” was interchangeable with “I” and had a similar pronunciation.
He suggested that “I” be separated from “J”. He suggested that “I” remain the vowel sound that we all love, and that “J” be used to represent “j” in “jury.” Trissino’s idea clearly gained traction so those are named Julie or Jason, Jasper, etc. all can thank Trissino for suggesting that your name starts with a “J”, instead of an “I”.
